A rough year with new beginnings

A rough year with new beginnings
Allow me to be slightly prophetic – but I promise it will not become a habit – as we are entering the new year of 2009. It is going to be very different from what we have become used to and it is with excitement but also with trepidation that we look into this New Year.

It is going to be rough in the sense that it will be quite uneven, things will happen unexpectedly and things will happen that we are not used to. Globalization will bring us even closer to one another, with a new kind of alienation that we did not heretofore know about. The virtual reality will depersonalize many people to the extent that it becomes difficult to relate in ordinary social life. This new global closeness is thus a mixed blessing, it opens up venues for innovations but more often than not the new technology will be used for very selfish and alienating ends.

This year however will be characterized by other things, by the real reality. The roughness has to do with the fact that a new president will take over in the White House in Washington. The expectations of him are daunting and if he is going to make a difference at all he will have to take a few very rough decisions: regarding the economy, regarding the conflict between Israel and Palestine (and the rest of the Arab world), and regarding how the world (not least Europe) could be influenced to move beyond race and ethnic identity.

It is going to be a rough year in South Africa as there will be an election, probably in April that will change the political landscape. Even if ANC wins the election, which is very likely at this point in time, this election will usher in a new leader as the present President Kgalema Motlanthe is a mere caretaker president. If Jacob Zuma is found not guilty as to the charges against him, or if the legal proceedings against him are postponed, he will most likely become the next president of South Africa. Only then will we know what that means.

In addition the new party Cope, Congress of the People, will be a genuine re-vitalization of the South African democracy and perhaps this party will make some inroads and make ANC a less dominant party. At best we will for the first time get a viable opposition, quite needed in any democracy. The fun part of 2009 is that it is quite impossible to predict what is going to happen politically here. We will be taken for a rough ride, to be sure, but it is a ride that contains a lot of promises for the future.

We should also be aware that this part of the world has a number of prominent leaders that are getting quite old. Last week Helen Suzman died over 90 years old; for many years she was the only anti-apartheid voice in the white South African parliament. Nelson Mandela is over 90 and Robert Mugabe well over 80. Will they survive 2009? In 1998 I saw them on the same stage in Harare: even then I said to myself, can two leaders be more different!? A prayer that has to go up to heaven is that at last we will see Robert Mugabe go during this year. Facing universal criticism, the international court of justice or his Creator, one can only say, Lord have mercy on him!

Dr Brigalia Bam, the Director General of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa, has done a great job furthering the ideas and logistics of democratic elections on the African continent. She was present at the All Africa Conference of Churches in Maputo, Mozambique at the beginning of December when the former President of Mozambique, Joachim Chissano, gave his address to a section of the assembly.

As it happened I became the last person to put a question to the former president after his address and I simply asked if he had resigned from the presidency voluntarily in 2004, and if so how he could influence other leaders, not just of Africa, but of the world (just think of Russia’s Putin, who knows exactly how to stay in power) to act in similar manner.

The moment that arose I will not easily forget. I had just done half of my question when he interjected: indeed I stepped down out of my own free will!, then a powerful applause ensued. My task was really already performed and in his much longer response he elaborated on the difficulty of resigning in a country torn by, not political conflict as much as poverty and natural disasters and that in the end his example of leaving of own volition was powerful enough.

Even this event at the end of last year signals a new era. Do not be too surprised if new, unexpected, democratic developments will occur in Africa rather than in moribund Europe held back by rigid ethnic (and partly very racist) thinking. Sitting on the southernmost tip of Africa I cannot help but thinking that we are entering an era of new beginnings. It is not just beginnings, but new beginnings. Never before did we in South Africa go into elections with such a diverse democratic scene, never before did we see a president elect like Barrack Obama of the United States. We are in for new things; they will be rough as there will be numerous new beginnings, but these are things full of hope, just as this year already is saturated with future, with things to come.